ideas of programming and rule making in order to formalise ideas. (For a detailed
discussion OfToonTalk code see Kahn 1996).
Toontalk consists of a game mode and a program mode, each of which I describe and
discuss in the next section.
Toontalk Game Mode
‘Game mode’ can be understood as a transformation of the program into ‘output’ in
the form of a rule sequence of moving, visual, and aural signs. The game mode in
Toontalk is a multimodal organisation of several modes, the modes of colour,
movement, sound-effect, and still image. There are three levels within the game
mode. First, there is the city level that is automatically displayed when the user enters
the Toontalk system. The city is an ever-present ‘game’ that can not be altered,
although it is possible to build new houses, to decorate them, and to control the
dimensions of the city. The second level of game mode is ready-made games, and the
third is the behaviours, each of which is described in turn in the next section.
The City Level
The Toontalk opening sequence is a multimodal metaphor of the ‘city’. The city level
is a visual map of the resources of the Toontalk. It is also a game. There are four
‘sub-levels’ within the city: The first sub-level is a representation of the city from
above. The second sub-level is a representation of the city at the level of the street.
The third sub-level is a representation in the city of the inside of a city house. The
fourth sub-level is a representation in the city of the floor of a city house. The
multimodal construction of each of these sub-levels of the city level is discussed in
this section.
Representation of the Cityfrom Above
The image of the opening screen of Toontalk shows a bird’s eye view of the city. A
helicopter hovers above the city, the blades rotate, and it is accompanied by a
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